In a surprising DIY project, an Imgur user designed a plasma-firing railgun using a 3D printer and widely available components.

In general, I consider myself a peaceful human being, but I can't help but get a little excited about futuristic weapons. We're already equiping the Navy with lasers that stun or kill while we test railguns which are even more explosive. But one civilian with engineering smarts might have done something more impressive - design a portable handheld railgun using 3D printed parts. The finished device can even fire plasma rounds. I'll repeat, this is a handheld railgun which fires plasma rounds.

Going by the usernames "NSA_Listbot" and "xtamared", the railgun's creator has posted images and videos to Imgur and YouTube describing his work. This portable version uses six 300J, 350V, and 5500uF electromagnetic capacitors to fire each shot. That propels the round forward at 560 miles per hour, leaving a solid dent on targets in its path.

All things considered, that speed is pretty good for a DIY weapon. (You average bullet travels at roughly 1500 mph, while a military-grade railgun can reach 13,000 mph.) But one special touch is that this weapon can fire different ammunition types. So far, NSA_Listbot has tested his portable railgun on rods of graphite, aluminum, copper-coated tungsten, carbon, and teflon - otherwise known as plasma. Which of course, makes this railgun sound even more futuristic and badass.

That's not to say the portable railgun is a practical weapon, by any means. First of all, it has an extensive charging time, with some tests requiring three minutes before a shot could be fired. For all the energy going into each round it does surprisingly little damage, and couldn't even clear a cantalope it was emptied into. And that's not getting into its general unwieldiness for anyone without a Gears of War-type physique.

That said, it's still an impressive achievement and looks fantastic to boot. With a few tweaks to ensure it's non-functioning this could be an amazing cosplay piece. At least until someone else figures out how to build a better plasma railgun with their 3D printer.

For a civilian grade rail gun, this is impressive. I wonder how much force overall he can get out of it with tweaking. I somewhat understand the physics behind it and there's definitely room for improvement. I'm curious if one can get more voltage out of it or if he maxed out with the best available tech.Either way this is awesome, and I wonder if he's going to get a knock at the door from DOD, "Sir, we need you to come with us".

Though it's not surprising it's so weak, and shots take so long to charge.

The kind of power supply you could build into a handheld device at the moment simply aren't up to the task. If each shot is 3000 kilojoules (assuming that's an accurate figure, and not off by several orders of magnitude), to fire that with a reasonable recharge time (say, 5 seconds, to be generous) you'd need a 600 kilowatt power supply.Sure, it only needs to provide power for 5 seconds at a time, but... 600 kilowatts is the power supply to about 5-10 homes.It's a miracle it works at all honestly, if it takes that much power to fire.3 minutes is 180 seconds. that means it draws roughly 16.66 kw while charging.

(cross-checks)...Yeah... Always fact-check your sources. Or at least, double-check the original source.,

Going by the usernames "NSA_Listbot" and "xtamared", the railgun's creator has posted images and videos to Imgur and YouTube describing his work. This portable version uses six electromagnetic capacitors to fire projectiles with 3,000 kilojoules per shot. That propels the round forward at 560 miles per hour, leaving a solid dent on targets in its path.

You've got some major factual errors going on there.According to the original source, the gun uses 6, 300j capacitors. Each shot fired is roughly 1.8 kjnot 3000.(honestly, the escapist's standards for fact-checking their articles have been atrocious for a seriously long time. For something pretending to be actual news of some kind, that's really embarrassing to keep witnessing.)

Anyway, with basic fact checking out of the way...So... With that in mind, 1.8 kj is still a lot if you had to provide it all at once. Charged in 3 minutes (if that's reliable. Can't easily check that one), it would take 10 watts. Which makes far more sense if you expect it to run off battery power. (the laptop on the desk next to me has a battery that can supply 70 watts or so.)

~shrug~ An interesting toy. Just look at the size of the capacitors in that thing though. Wow. XD

There are entire hobbies built around these things because they're so accurate.

Well "rail gun" doesn't really mean anything apart from having some rail, that particular type of gun in the video got that name on account of rails that let the barrel travel, but otherwise they are plain old gunpowder guns.

What people usually mean is Gauss gun, which propels projectiles with magnetic force, also a completely separate thing from a plasma gun as the only thing defining that would be some plasma coming out. It's impossible to tell if the gun in question here is actually doing any of that or not as there is no solid information on what is happening inside. But usually when the available wording is so vague it means the creator has only a vague understanding of what he is doing, and more then likely he is just adding things(like air tanks) in an effort to have anything at all happen.His claim of 560mph clearly isn't happening with the tests, nor can someone accurately determine that without some serious equipment so he must be making shit up.

Though it's not surprising it's so weak, and shots take so long to charge.

The kind of power supply you could build into a handheld device at the moment simply aren't up to the task. If each shot is 3000 kilojoules (assuming that's an accurate figure, and not off by several orders of magnitude), to fire that with a reasonable recharge time (say, 5 seconds, to be generous) you'd need a 600 kilowatt power supply.Sure, it only needs to provide power for 5 seconds at a time, but... 600 kilowatts is the power supply to about 5-10 homes.It's a miracle it works at all honestly, if it takes that much power to fire.3 minutes is 180 seconds. that means it draws roughly 16.66 kw while charging.

(cross-checks)...Yeah... Always fact-check your sources. Or at least, double-check the original source.,

Going by the usernames "NSA_Listbot" and "xtamared", the railgun's creator has posted images and videos to Imgur and YouTube describing his work. This portable version uses six electromagnetic capacitors to fire projectiles with 3,000 kilojoules per shot. That propels the round forward at 560 miles per hour, leaving a solid dent on targets in its path.

You've got some major factual errors going on there.According to the original source, the gun uses 6, 300j capacitors. Each shot fired is roughly 1.8 kjnot 3000.(honestly, the escapist's standards for fact-checking their articles have been atrocious for a seriously long time. For something pretending to be actual news of some kind, that's really embarrassing to keep witnessing.)

Anyway, with basic fact checking out of the way...So... With that in mind, 1.8 kj is still a lot if you had to provide it all at once. Charged in 3 minutes (if that's reliable. Can't easily check that one), it would take 10 watts. Which makes far more sense if you expect it to run off battery power. (the laptop on the desk next to me has a battery that can supply 70 watts or so.)

~shrug~ An interesting toy. Just look at the size of the capacitors in that thing though. Wow. XD

That doesn't sound like factual errors it just sounds like one error that you were needlessly harsh in pointing out.

It's is a factual error. I mean, it is blatantly wrong. (or was)Yes, I'm being harsh, but this has been going on forever. The standards for articles around here are atrocious, and you know, after years of seeing it I find it a bit tiresome.

Besides, I happen to have a science background, and a basic thing they teach you is... Sanity check your numbers.

3000 kj is not a trivial amount of energy to use. (As I pointed out trying to calculate the implications, if that had to be generated in one second, that would require the total energy provisions for 5-10 houses).

given the actual figure (according to the source... I mean, you can track down the source but can't be bothered to check what it says?) is 1.8 kj, which not only is an antirely different number, but also happens to be 3 orders of magnitude lower...

Let's just say it irks me to see a mistake with those kinds of implications.And you passing it off as nothing also annoys me.It's like confusing a hand grenade for a nuke, and then shrugging and saying 'well, they both explode, right? What's the big deal?'

Adam Jensen:What's the point? A weapon is supposed to be useful and practical. It if isn't, then no amount of "cool points" matter. It's still useless. Muskets are more practical than this.

Well, I doubt this particular build is meant to be a weapon. Actually it remains to be seen if it even is a railgun.

But emplaced electric propulsion weapons can manage accuracy, speed, and distance with much lower projectile costs compared to standard weapons. Handheld versions don't make much sense and certainly aren't viable at this time. That doesn't mean they aren't fun to build and mess with as non-weaponized versions.

There are entire hobbies built around these things because they're so accurate.

Well "rail gun" doesn't really mean anything apart from having some rail, that particular type of gun in the video got that name on account of rails that let the barrel travel, but otherwise they are plain old gunpowder guns.

What people usually mean is Gauss gun, which propels projectiles with magnetic force, also a completely separate thing from a plasma gun as the only thing defining that would be some plasma coming out. It's impossible to tell if the gun in question here is actually doing any of that or not as there is no solid information on what is happening inside. But usually when the available wording is so vague it means the creator has only a vague understanding of what he is doing, and more then likely he is just adding things(like air tanks) in an effort to have anything at all happen.His claim of 560mph clearly isn't happening with the tests, nor can someone accurately determine that without some serious equipment so he must be making shit up.

Half arsing things is how most DIY projects go after all.

Gauss weapons are a specific design where your electromagnets switch polarity rapidly so that they are always either pushing or pulling the charged projectile along the barrel, it's similar to the idea behind particle accelerators. Railguns however use the principle of force on a wire where they pass a current accross the projectile between two rails and have a magnetic field perpendicular to the barrel, this results in a force on the projectile along the barrel which causes acceleration.

Both designs have benefits and drawbacks, the railgun is slightly easier to produce mechanically because it's got really only 3 major components, the magnet, the rails and the projectile. However at higher muzzle energies you can get the projectile arc welded to the rails or the rails can become warped due to frictional heating.

On the contrary, a gauss weapon takes a lot of skill to construct because everything should be precisely constructed to perform properly, as well as this it needs a computer to control the magnet's polarity. Once built however it can fire any ferromagnet, rare earth magnet or anything with a static electric or magnetic charge.

I'm saying that there's a difference between the plural and singular for one, and for another that you're not dealing with STEM people. You're talking to someone who writes "articles" for an internet forum. Do you really need to make your point that harsh? Do you think he knows what a Joule actually is, or the implications of doubling the energy density of those capacitors? What seems so obvious and wrong to you may not even be noticed by most people.

The introduction of the error actually comes from Yahoo but that actually makes it all the worse for me as that means that the article was written directly from another article as opposed to reading the source. While I don't expect the article to dissect the functionality of the gun in question, I do expect more than an article that has the same amount of work put into it as someone posting on my facebook feed.

Though it's not surprising it's so weak, and shots take so long to charge.

The kind of power supply you could build into a handheld device at the moment simply aren't up to the task. If each shot is 3000 kilojoules (assuming that's an accurate figure, and not off by several orders of magnitude), to fire that with a reasonable recharge time (say, 5 seconds, to be generous) you'd need a 600 kilowatt power supply.Sure, it only needs to provide power for 5 seconds at a time, but... 600 kilowatts is the power supply to about 5-10 homes.It's a miracle it works at all honestly, if it takes that much power to fire.3 minutes is 180 seconds. that means it draws roughly 16.66 kw while charging.

(cross-checks)...Yeah... Always fact-check your sources. Or at least, double-check the original source.,

Going by the usernames "NSA_Listbot" and "xtamared", the railgun's creator has posted images and videos to Imgur and YouTube describing his work. This portable version uses six electromagnetic capacitors to fire projectiles with 3,000 kilojoules per shot. That propels the round forward at 560 miles per hour, leaving a solid dent on targets in its path.

You've got some major factual errors going on there.According to the original source, the gun uses 6, 300j capacitors. Each shot fired is roughly 1.8 kjnot 3000.(honestly, the escapist's standards for fact-checking their articles have been atrocious for a seriously long time. For something pretending to be actual news of some kind, that's really embarrassing to keep witnessing.)

Anyway, with basic fact checking out of the way...So... With that in mind, 1.8 kj is still a lot if you had to provide it all at once. Charged in 3 minutes (if that's reliable. Can't easily check that one), it would take 10 watts. Which makes far more sense if you expect it to run off battery power. (the laptop on the desk next to me has a battery that can supply 70 watts or so.)

~shrug~ An interesting toy. Just look at the size of the capacitors in that thing though. Wow. XD

Going to have to agree with you, and also add that the "3D-Printed" and "Plasma" parts are also misleading. By 3D printed, they mean that they made custom parts with a 3D printer. They didn't 3D print the capacitors, the wiring, etc. I know that 3D printers are a big "thing" (Or at least they were a while back), but this isn't really all that much to do with them. Even if the makers shared the blueprints of the parts, it's a lot more complicated than that. It really, really doesn't matter to the story, it really doesn't add anything, except a click-bait title. I know that this can be done better.

And that really isn't what people mean by "Plasma". Teflon coated rounds is not what people are expecting, they're not expecting the brief creation of plasma during firing, they're expecting a projectile that is made from a Plasma, as in the state of matter. They're expecting something like Star Wars or Halo. And that is hypothetically a possibility(Not that it'd look like Star Wars or Halo), you can manipulate plasma with a magnetic field. So the article misleads people into thinking that we have some sort of Star Wars blaster, and instead we seem to have a Teflon coated Aluminium slug which gets burned by the temporary creation of plasma caused by the magnetic field created. That's really, really weak.

Small railguns are toys, look at the effort going into capacitors to produce such an unsatisfying result.

As far as I knew, that's just the stuff they put on frying pans to make them non-stick...

It's not. You can get plasma-treated Teflon, but that doesn't seem to be what they're talking about here. If you watch the video, the projectile sustains burns and the guy refers to it as "Plasma damage". As in actual plasma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)). It's like a really hot, ionized gas, and it can result from strong magnetic fields (Like the ones involved in a rail gun). I don't know enough about Plasma myself to know if I'd expect it from a device this small, it could just as easily be the burning of the coating from exposure to current.

Alternatively, a bit of reading says that apparently some people use a Plasma as the armature in a railgun, at which point I can safely say I have no idea what's going on, but it's not like the article explains this either, they just wanted Plasma in the title.

At no point does the gun shape an ionized gas to use as a projectile. At no point does it fire a round that is made up of even Blood Plasma. At no point does it fire anything but a small pellet.

Loonyyy:If you watch the video, the projectile sustains burns and the guy refers to it as "Plasma damage". As in actual plasma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)).

Sure, but there's a very big difference between accidentally creating a small amount of plasma that burns the projectile being fired, and actually firing a projectile composed of plasma. The article claims the latter, which is factually wrong in at least three different ways (first, the video doesn't claim any such thing it just says the projectile was damaged by plasma, second teflon is not ever "also known as plasma", and third he certainly hasn't tested this gun with "rods of plasma").

It's like a really hot, ionized gas

Plasma is simply an ionised gas, it doesn't have to be hot; you can get plasmas of pretty much any temperature. They are generally easier to create using high temperatures, but low pressure will do the job just as well - interstellar space and nebulae are mainly low temperature plasmas.

I don't know enough about Plasma myself to know if I'd expect it from a device this small

You create plasma when you light a match, so size isn't really relevant. The question is rather the claimed amount and mechanism for creating it. An electric spark is a plasma (that is, the blue spark you can actually see is a plasma created by the actual electric discharge; lightning is the same thing on a larger scale), so he could easily be creating something that could technically be called "plasma damage" simply by having bad wiring or the rails too close together.

Alternatively, a bit of reading says that apparently some people use a Plasma as the armature in a railgun, at which point I can safely say I have no idea what's going on

Railguns usually work by either directly accelerating a metal projectile along the rails, or alternatively by having a piece of metal attached to the rails (called an armature) which is used to push the projectile, which allows you to use projectiles of any material. A plasma armature is like the latter, but instead of using a piece of metal you create a plasma and accelerate that down the rails, which pushes the projectile in the same way the expanding gas in a gunpowder one does. It's a lot trickier, but solves some of the problems associated with physical moving parts at high speeds (such as arc-welding the moving part to the rails, as someone mentioned above). I'm pretty this is not being done in the video in question.

Loonyyy:If you watch the video, the projectile sustains burns and the guy refers to it as "Plasma damage". As in actual plasma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_(physics)).

Sure, but there's a very big difference between accidentally creating a small amount of plasma that burns the projectile being fired, and actually firing a projectile composed of plasma. The article claims the latter, which is factually wrong in at least three different ways (first, the video doesn't claim any such thing it just says the projectile was damaged by plasma, second teflon is not ever "also known as plasma", and third he certainly hasn't tested this gun with "rods of plasma").

That was actually the point of my post. The headline, and the bolded text in the article, is misleading. I'm not so much having a go at the video maker, he's made quite an impressive project, as having a go at the poor reporting of it, which sells short the achievement by not explaining the sort of work that goes into it in favour of 560 mph, ooh, big number, and 3D Printed, because those will get clicks. If you're going to run a science and tech column, it'd be nice if I learnt something by reading it, and more so if it wasn't wrong about high school science, and even nicer if it respected the very thing it purports to be about.

Plasma is simply an ionised gas, it doesn't have to be hot; you can get plasmas of pretty much any temperature. They are generally easier to create using high temperatures, but low pressure will do the job just as well - interstellar space and nebulae are mainly low temperature plasmas.

Yes, but typically, on earth, you're going to be dealing with hot plasma, especially in this case, where we're talking about standard pressure, not low pressure, and a weapon application, where presumably, the aim is to burn someone with a projectile. I'm fairly skeptical about using plasma as a projectile anyway, unless you're getting a lot of heat, I can't imagine that the dispersion, reduced range, loss of kinetic energy, etc, makes a better projectile than a solid projectile.

You create plasma when you light a match, so size isn't really relevant. The question is rather the claimed amount and mechanism for creating it. An electric spark is a plasma (that is, the blue spark you can actually see is a plasma created by the actual electric discharge; lightning is the same thing on a larger scale), so he could easily be creating something that could technically be called "plasma damage" simply by having bad wiring or the rails too close together.

True, but I'm not sure that the burns on the projectile are the result of "plasma damage", and not just burns from current being passed through the projectile, and since the article doesn't mention any of the details, that's worse. I don't know enough about the apparatus, or plasma, to predict if there's enough plasma to cause the burns, and some railguns have been designed to use the projectile are a conductor (That's your basic high school railgun). It's a nitpick, but I think it's important, since this is the only part of the cited source material that mentions plasma. Again, I'm basically ripping into the article. In the video they present, the only plasma mentioned is possible plasma damage to the projectile. At no point are we talking "Firing a plasma round". We're talking "Firing an Aluminium slug, which maybe has been burned by plasma generated by the electromagnets, or might be being used as a conductor in a railgun without an armature, fuck you, you work it out". Funnily enough, that wasn't the headline. They heard the word plasma, took it out and put it in the headline and the article to sell a fake news story.

A plasma armature is like the latter, but instead of using a piece of metal you create a plasma and accelerate that down the rails, which pushes the projectile in the same way the expanding gas in a gunpowder one does. It's a lot trickier, but solves some of the problems associated with physical moving parts at high speeds (such as arc-welding the moving part to the rails, as someone mentioned above). I'm pretty this is not being done in the video in question.

That's very interesting, I was wondering how that's done. I've build a regular one in Physics way back with two rails and a armature/projectile, and was aware of the regular armature ones, but had only just seen the plasma ones. Out of curiosity, how would they generate the plasma there? I'm wondering whether they use more electromagnets, and what happens to the low pressure behind it. It's been noted by a few that there's a compressed air tank in there doing something, which I haven't quite puzzled out, I thought it might be for returning the armature.

I'm impressed yet disappointed. For a homemade, non-military grade device it is pretty cool, but I was expecting the thing to fire a molten chunk of metal. I was a little disappointed that the bullet maintained its shape. It is also highly likely I am misunderstanding how railguns ammunition works (I am aware of how railgun firing functionality works).